A Tale of Two Hotels: The Santa Fe
and the Arcoiris, where Zicatela’s
tourist industry began

The Santa Fe

Fountain, Hotel Santa Fe

Imagine Zicatela in 1975. There’s a pig farm where Merlin’s
now is and cows and goats forage on the beach,
which was then covered with huizache. (In a still controversial
move, the native vegetation was cleared by the
state deputy in 1985.) A brickyard stands just beyond the
rocks that separate Playa Marinero from Zicatela, and the
beach extends all the way up to the highway. The owner
of the brickyard is the former custom’s agent from the
time when coffee was shipped from Puerto Escondido
to the U.S. Imagine having the opportunity to buy that
brickyard and its adjacent land.

Robin Cleaver was in the import business back then,
buying Mexican folk art for his shop in Palo Alto, California.
At the urging of his suppliers from Ocotlán, Olegario
y Oralia Mendoza, one day he hopped onto a DC
3 and alighted on the airstrip - now Blvd Benito Juárez
- in Rinconada. Being only
human, he fell in love with
the place.

Hotel Santa Fe, first building

Robin calls it serendipity.
It seems so improbable
that a person from
Palo Alto just happened
to know Dora Martínez,
who had a vegetarian restaurant
in Oaxaca and was
also the goddaughter of
Nacho Acevedo, the excustom’s
agent. Knowing
Robin’s affinity for Puerto,
she told him when the
Zicatela property was for
sale. Thus it happened
that a young man, with no
plans beyond buying Mexican
art for his shop, came
to build Puerto’s first 4-star
hotel.

After forming a Mexican
corporation with his
Mexican associates to purchase
the land, the next
step was finding investors
and partners to build the hotel. From the start Robin
knew he could count on his brother Paul to manage
the hotel and vegetarian restaurant, since Paul Cleaver
is, in his brother’s words, “a great host and cook” and as
gregarious as his brother is low-keyed. Paul Cleaver has
since moved on to his own hotel, El Tabuchín, located just
behind the Santa Fe, which is equally famous for its gourmet
breakfasts and its owner’s hospitality.

When construction on the Santa Fe started in 1981, all
of Puerto’s tourist facilities were centered on Playa Principal.
The accommodations were fairly basic, and there
were no vegetarian restaurants, a problem for Cleaver
who has been a vegetarian all his adult life. The other
hotel owners were welcoming, but they thought he was
making a big mistake building so far away. Not only did
the calle del Morro not exist then, but there wasn’t even
a dirt road down from the highway to Zicatela.

The plan was to begin with 22 of a projected 67
rooms, but the Mexican economic crisis of 1982 and its
attendant devaluations forced Cleaver to scale back, and
it was a ten-room hotel that opened its doors in December,
1982. The first guests were in their rooms before the
windows were installed and the power connected, which
turned out not to be a problem, because they said they
preferred candles to electric lights.

Today the Santa Fe is the gracious grand dame at the
entrance to Zicatela, with 60 rooms, two pools, and a
gourmet vegetarian and seafood restaurant. It even has
a gift shop that features Mexican folk art.

Hotel Arcoiris

Hotel Arcoiris, first building

In 1984, José Luis Mendiola was a civil engineer
working on oil platforms and pipelines in Veracruz with
dreams of leaving the petroleum business and
dedicating himself full-time to his cattle ranch. His
closest friends were the Americans he was working
with and they were surfers who flew to Puerto Escondido
whenever they could. José Luis was not a
surfer, but he agreed to accompany them on one
of their trips.

The American engineers wanted to open a hotel
on Zicatela, and they wanted José Luis to be their
partner. A meeting was held in San Antonio, Texas
to put together a partnership. José Luis remembers
that he proposed that they first share some tequila,
then they shook hands to finalize the deal. And that
is how the would-be cattle rancher came to run a
hotel in Puerto Escondido.

The partners bought the land for the Arcoiris
from a man who had purchased it from the land
trust of Puerto Escondido (FIPE) – the state entity
that had been set up as part of the 1970 federal
expropriation of the area. But when they were ready to
build, they found that their property had been divided
into four lots that were claimed by people from Colotepec.
(The municipio of Santa María Colotepec has never
recognized the part of the expropriation that extends
from Playa Principal to the Punta.) It took a year to iron
out the conflicting claims to everyone’s satisfaction.

Then there was the question of seismic preparedness.
José Luis remembers arguing with his partners over
an architectural plan that did not seem appropriate for
Oaxaca’s shaky ground. Then came the devastating 8.0
Mexico City earthquake in September of 1985 and with
it the realization that the design had to change. At this
point, all but one of the partners, Robert Crowe, abandoned
the project.

The original plan called for 24 rooms, but the financial
situation of the mid-80s was such that only eight
were built when the hotel opened in 1986. Actually, the
Arcoiris never had an official opening, since guests started
moving in when it was just a bare cement construction.
As José Luis tells it, surfers on Zicatela needed a safe
place to keep their gear and didn’t mind sleeping on the
floor or sharing a communal bathroom. The restaurant
started with a cooler which operated on the honor system.
These first guests also helped out by planting the
hotel’s banana and papaya trees. The hotel was finally
finished in 1989.

As is the case with many of Puerto’s hotels, besides
attracting young surfers, the Arcoiris also has counted on
retirees from Canada and the north of the U.S. who have
been coming every winter for the last twenty years, some
staying as long as five months. Nonetheless, the last five
years have been hard for the hotels, with the international
economic crisis and the demise of Mexicana airlines.

José Luis notes that there are fewer international
tourists, and those who come don’t stay as long as they
used to. On the other hand, the Arcoiris now hosts students
from Norway through a university program in
which the young people take courses from Norwegian
professors on a semester abroad on Zicatela.